Letters to the Editor, Dec. 2

Friday

Dec 2, 2016 at 2:00 AMDec 5, 2016 at 7:01 AM

Actions have consequences

I recently heard a commentator reflecting on Germany’s rise of Nazism and arguing that resistance to Hitler came too late. Hope, however, stemmed from the current early resistance we have seen to Trump.

I firmly believe that our actions should incorporate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While we have been making slow progress on emissions reductions, our achievements are in real danger. The Paris Climate Accord has a goal of restricting global warming below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing a more reasonable target of 1.5 degrees Celsius and achieving net zero emissions and phasing out fossil fuels. Withdrawing would have dire global consequences. Likewise, opening our public land for fracking and fossil fuel extraction would have negative implications for any child born this century or late last century.

So, what should we do? In addition to taking incremental steps reducing our individual and collective greenhouse gas emissions, we should oppose weakening the Environmental Protection Agency (protecting our air and water quality), undermining civil liberties, repealing women’s reproductive rights, denying marriage freedom to anyone, making a registry of our neighbors and torturing prisoners, etc. Need I continue?

History’s lesson? Let’s not be too late!

Louise Shawkat

Ashland

Fight on

Now that we are faced with a racist, xenophobic and scattershot presidential administration, a reactionary Congress and probably a soon-to-be blindered Supreme Court, we shall see how well our cultural institutions — media, charitable, and corporate — can carry forward hard-won progressive ideals and, more importantly, ideas.

It will be up to the electoral majority to resist the ethical and legal distortions promoted by the minority and their embarrassing minions repopulating Washington. The luddites have muddied the waters, but I hope our better angels of openness and inclusion still inhabit the depths of our national soul.

May those values continue to be expressed clearly in advertising, in corporate cultures, among liberal congregations, in film, television and print media. Let us hope the progressive minorities in the Senate and House will not be drawn to the right in service of any expediency.

Let no rational voice be silent, because this is a defining moment, when we can show the world what America is still about, despite the resurgence of dark and dissonant forces infecting so much of the body politic. Speak out; act, don’t despair; despair is the cohort of inertia.

Gary R. Collins

Jacksonville

What if ...

What if I told you Russian warships had traveled the St. Lawrence Seaway and were sailing on Lake Erie, and ...

Canada had entered into a treaty with Russia allowing Russian missiles to be placed on the U.S. border and ...

Russia had interfered with the internal affairs of Mexico and engineered a coup placing a militant anti-American government in power?

You would say, "No way!"

And you would be right. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis! Remember the Grenada invasion!

Now let me tell you this: American warships entered the Black Sea in 2014 and ...

NATO is planning on placing American missiles on the Russian border in the Ukraine and ...

Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland did indeed conspire to aid the Ukranian coup that ousted the democratically elected president, Yanukovych.

Before you condemn the hypocrisy of our country, remember that the United States is an “exceptional” country, and that Putin is an evil monster.